Wordpress Database in MySql-Database?

Question

Hi,

all wordpress data is stored in a database (for example mysql)... but, wordpress also stores some data fields in own database format like this:

a:1:{s:12:"header_image";s:49:"http://abcd1.de/files/2010/09/Laptop-Zuebhoer.jpg";}

(this data is stored in mysql as a text field) its easy to see that "a" is the amount, "s" is the string length... sometimes there is also an "i" for index..

OK, my question: is this something wordpress specific? this looks a little bit like json.. What is the name of this thing :) ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

It's the output from PHP's serialize function.